


Greet This Brand New Day

by runningsissors



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Pre-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningsissors/pseuds/runningsissors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There is work to be done and she will not turn her back." Tauriel and the road to the Lonely Mountain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greet This Brand New Day

**Author's Note:**

> for greengardens, as always, who pointed out that there are too many plot holes in BotFA to play with. Title taken from The Beatles' "Dear Prudence".

After they have gathered their dead and salvage what is possible, they make for Dale. With no supplies and no boat, the dwarves’ only option is to make for the mountain along the north pass through the city, with those who seek refuge within its walls.

Guilt hangs heavy in the air amongst the four left behind. She can see it on their faces as they stop to regroup with the rest of the survivors. She will not lay judgement, what’s done is done. The only option is to move forward. 

“Kíli needs rest,” the elder of the group, Óin urges, “that leg’s in no condition to go anywhere.” 

Kíli’s protest is immediate, but it is clear to all that he is still far too weak and ashen in colour. It will take a few days still to regain his strength. They cannot make it on their own. 

“Will you come?” Kíli asks, eyes dark and imploring. There is work to be done and she will not turn her back.

“Yes,” she replies, “I will follow.” 

 

 

 

 

She remembers the fall of Erebor. She had been a mere soldier in the Guard then, barely four hundred years of age and much too inexperienced to venture out beyond the boarders of the forest. 

But she had heard the stories in the aftermath, how the great Kingdom under the Mountain had been laid to waste on the backs of the greediness of dwarves. They were feral and unruly, beyond the help of the Woodland Realm. 

A thousand arrows could not pierce the belly of a fire drake, so no convoy had been sent in aid. There was no fight to be had as far as King Thranduil had been concerned, and thus it was not given another thought by all, including she. 

In the ensuing centuries that followed Greenwood was plunged further and further into self inflicted isolation, and so the dwarves of Erebor passed into memory. 

 

 

 

 

The journey is slow; the people of Esgaroth weary and loaded down. The call of their kingdom and fate of their kinsmen is no doubt heavy on the dwarves minds as the Lonely Mountain looms above them. 

Fíli walks, jaw clenched tight and eyes trailing his brother anxiously. Two brothers, so deeply interwoven into one other at times she is sure they will meld into one. Yet in many ways they are so different: Fíli’s subtle pragmatism there to pull Kíli’s romantic, foolhardy nature from the edge. She imagines Fíli has spent his life pulling his brother out of one trouble and directly into another. 

She glances at Kíli fleetingly, to the bandage wrapped around his leg stained with fresh blood and the agitated, shamed look on his face as a wagon pulls him steadily onwards before her and the others. 

She feels his gaze on her like a sun spot through the trees, but cannot meet his eye. No words have been spoken of the night past, but she knows that he waits on the question she has no answer to. 

Dwarves and Men, they are all _fírimar_ and bound to the earth. They will die. _He_ will die, and she will still remain, unchanged till the end of days. 

 

 

 

 

They make camp just shy of sunset, Dale just beyond the horizon with a full day’s journey still ahead. 

Kíli shoots arrows at the trees with such force Tauriel is sure he’ll snap the bowstring if he does not take more care. It’s as if he thinks he can simply will his body into mending itself if he pushes hard enough.   A Morgul wound will never fully heal though, all elves know this. The pain will linger the rest of his life. 

She calls a warning when his knee buckles. Her hand on his shoulder to steady him.   

“I’m fine,” he snaps, his expression softening when he glances over at her. “Sorry,” he mumbles, “I’m not very good at staying still. Lousy patient, really,” his lips curl a small grin and her stomach twists with it. 

She likes his face; though not particularly handsome by any measured elven standard, something warm and gay lives inside his eyes, something merry in the curve of his mouth. Something that makes her heart beat just a step faster. His arms are strong and his hands are capable. He is made of harder things than stone, and though he’s young, she knows he’s lived full and unreservedly. 

She does not know if she likes this feeling, she is not sure she even recognizes what it is. 

She goes to leave, but he grabs her hand, runs the rough pad of his thumb across her wrist. “You saved my life,” he speaks low, quiet like a prayer to the Valar. 

She had saved him, something she thought beyond her abilities before. She is a warrior. She has taken life (though she cannot reckon those foul creatures of Morgoth as true life) which interferes with the ability to preserve life. Yet somehow the Eldar had found something within her worthy enough to spare his life. 

There is that heaviness to his look again, his eyes dark as coal. It’s an expression she cannot place but which puts her at edge, like the hairsbreadth moment before her arrow meets its mark. 

“Yes,” she murmurs and pulls away. 

 

 

 

 

When the sky grows darker she walks the perimeter of their camp, bow strung and quiver loaded with arrows she’d salvaged from the orc corpses in Esgaroth. There’s a nervous energy settling in her bones, and for a moment she imagines a hoard of spiders crawling from the trees just to give her someway to expel this feeling.

If she is hiding she does not acknowledge it.

When she returns to camp she sharpens her blades and rewires her arrows by the warm fires, while the dwarves speak in hushed tones around her. In the brief company she has kept with dwarves, she has found them to be a most intriguing people. They are a singularly stubborn and proud race, not prone to the acceptance of help unless dearly needed, nor the acknowledgment of their limitations. 

She imagines that in many ways these are faults found within her own character as well.

But they are a hardy sort as well, sturdy and resourceful. She values their fierce loyalty, respects their stamina and fury in battle. She would gladly fight beside them should the occasion arise.

As they make plans for the morn she listens silently, focused on her task. 

She will not meet _his_ eye again. 

It is better this way; to quell the stirring feeling in her breast than to encourage his affection. Because that is what it is, affection, simple amorous infatuation that serves neither of them. They will leave for the mountain to meet their kin and she will head north to rejoin Legolas, if her companion does not track her first. 

This will pass, as all things in this world do. 

 

 

 

 

In Greenwood she is a tree, one in the thousands of ancient oaks that live within the forest. Deep roots to the ground to hold her fast, and bark thick and strong to protect what is soft and vulnerable inside. 

Out here though in the mortal world she feels uprooted, feels each new sensation this world pulls her into like a strong gale knocking her about. Long had she been fascinated by the dominion of man, but now it frightens her. Frightened by how fragile their lives are; how bound they are by the needs and limitations of their bodies.

Yet she is humbled by them, by man’s endurance from all the terrors Arda has inflicted upon them. 

Over six-hundred years old and never has she felt more ashamed of how sheltered the lives of her people truly are. They do not live, not really. Not the way she yearns to. The woodland elves have turned their back on the suffering of Middle Earth, as though it is beneath them, as if they are unaffected by the darkness that riddles this world. She cannot abide by this. 

 

 

 

The sun has not yet risen as the dwarves set off for the mountain. She tries not to watch them ready themselves, but finds there is little else to do at this early hour. 

There is a heavy feeling in the air, one that makes the dwarves shift uncomfortably. Fíli casts glances between his brother and her, a deep crease etched between his brow. Not for the first time does she wonder if he knows more than he lets on. 

A hardy shake of the hand and a nod of the head, and they are off. Kíli lingers for a moment, his brother at his back. 

Every creature wants. It is a truth universally acknowledged as the first instinct of any creation. They hunger for one thing or another, for food, for warmth, power, companionship. Eru gave them this when he breathed life into their bodies.

“I am not afraid of how I feel,” he says and she believes him. 

She is not above her desires and she will not try to fight them. They do not make her weak she realizes, they make her real. 

He takes her hand and engulfs it in his own. He wants her and she knows now she wants him in return. She feels the cool weight of the rune stone he pushes into her palm, and the heat of his lips as he seals it with a hard, burning kiss. 

She feels as if she is running through the trees, heart galloping inside her chest, chasing, chasing, _chasing…_

“Keep it safe for me till I come back.” She nods, her words caught in her throat, and he grins, pressing one last rushed kiss to the top of her hand before limping off to join his brother. 

She can read between the lines, can understand the promise he has just made her. By the Valar, in this moment there is nothing she desires more than to see his face again. If this is what life is beyond the forest, then she knows now she cannot go back. Maybe she has known since the moment she crossed the boarder of the Greenwood. 

She watches as their forms become inky dots in the landscape before finally turning back to camp. 

There is still work to be done and she has time.


End file.
